Another reason I don't use a Mac
I don’t like proprietary software. So I use Linux. But I want my new program — if you use Ruby: “gem install jimmy_jukebox”; code at https://github.com/JamesLavin/jimmy_jukebox — to work on Macs, and my wife has a Mac.
So, I figured, I’ll install it on her machine and see whether it works.
The gem installed fine. And “load_jukebox” worked fine. But “play_jukebox” isn’t detecting that the OS is a Mac (which is necessary because I must use a different program to play MP3 and OGG files on Macs). Investigation revealed that my wife’s machine was choking when my program asked it to “require ‘rbconfig’”. (There’s something strange about Ruby installations on Macs.)
I figured the easiest solution is to install RVM. So I install and configure RVM. But that chokes because Macs don’t come with GCC (a standard, open-source C/C++/Objective-C/Java compiler), though they definitely should.
Worse still, you can’t just install GCC on a Mac. You must first install XCode. And Apple won’t let you download XCode from its developer website without a username and password.
And, then, when you start downloading XCode, you discover it’s more than 4GB! An entire DVD.
It’s downloading now, but my efforts to test “jimmy_jukebox” on my wife’s Mac are delayed by three hours because of Apple’s fetish for all things proprietary.
Posted by James on Thursday, August 11, 2011